AWS 350: Women's Writing and Healing (taught Fall 2001)

The publication of Anne Frank's diary in 1952 initiated an interest in women's journal writing. This interest became activity and genre in the attempt to define and create women's studies curricula. The information found in the narration of daily lives discovers and shapes women's culture.

This seminar studies the role of women's journals as both activity in and genre of women's literature and culture. To look at cross-cultural women's journals is to see women's writing that pursues personal healing and cultural healing. Cultural healing may be defined both as recovery of women-centered values within patriarchy and the individual woman's recovery from dysfunction within her culture.

Therefore, we will ask several questions in this course:

What is the relation between writing and healing in women's journals? How does journal writing engage, assert, and develop self and culture?

What happens to us as we write?

How does daily writing invite cultural healing?

The recognition of writing as healing opens exciting new interpretations about journal writing and continues to confirm its value in gender and cultural studies.

Become familiar with the North American Women's Letters and Diaries online collection; Class discussion of online writing; presentation on Online Journal Writing by Shasta Turner, Ph.D. Candidate in English.